David Kavanagh

It's a bit of a grey area, Ciara, to be honest, because, you know, a lot of guys presume that because they've been watching porn as single people that it's OK to continue watching porn in relationships.

So I would suggest that, you know, as soon as you start dating somebody, that women should really kind of check in with their partners and say, look...

I have thoughts about pornography.

I want to just check in with you in relation to what your thoughts are.

And if you as a woman think pornography is cheating, then you have a right to say that and to express that to your partner.

And, you know, if he agrees that, you know, him continuing to watch pornography while in a relationship with you is inappropriate because it is a form of sexual arousal that's, you know, outside of the relationship.

And it's not really healthy for men to do that, in fairness.

then, you know, if after that, that agreement has been made, he is found to be watching pornography afterwards, then that then could be constituted as inappropriate, inappropriate cheating.

But technically speaking, it's not, you know, in terms of definitions, it's not technically a form of cheating, but because it's a norm that you've established and agreed upon that has now been breached by that individual, it's not, it's not okay in that sense.

He can do, but a lot of men tend not to because they are actually quite ashamed of it.

So, you know, it's funny, in the last 20 odd years, we've had this normalisation of pornography.

Yet the men I'm talking to in my practice, they're telling me that they're absolutely mortified and ashamed of the fact that they watch pornography.

And when they tell their friends that they watch pornography, their friends kind of, you know, agree that, yeah, we watch it too, but it's not something we want to be telling our partners about because there's this sense of we should not be doing this.

So there's a kind of a double standard almost in the sense that society kind of expects men to do it, but at the same time, men themselves feel bad for the fact that they're doing it.

Well, it's the fact that, like, so if a man is single and he's watching pornography, then it's the very fact that he is getting aroused from looking at people having sex.

It's not something that you want to be telling your friends about.

So, yeah, again, it's normalised.

People do it, but

There's a huge amount of shame around it.

And, you know, it's illegal for us as individuals to be looking at people having sex.